Those in Peril on the Zugersee, Zug, Switzerland--June 2002

And it all started so well… We'd had lots of adventures over the past few days in Switzerland – climbing near-vertical hills and hiking huge distances in the searing heat to nearby lakes, exploring immense cave systems, and generally enjoying the sumptuous furnishings of the Swiss countryside in the summer – and our last full day in Zug seemed to offer similar fun. Zug sits on the edge of the Zugersee, a lake about forty kilometres in circumference. Steve, in whose flat we were staying (although he was in England making comedy amateur films at the time), had said that one thing we must do is cycle round the lake, as it was very nice.
First issue – bikes. Early in the morning, we ambled down into Zug in search of the tourist information centre. Claire, as designated local language speaker, asked about bike hire, and we were directed to a bus parked in the middle of one of the big squares that open out every time you turn a corner in Switzerland. There were lots and lots of bikes parked outside, and the two men who were tending them immediately fitted a couple of them up. Mine had a huge yellow box on the back, emblazoned with the name of some local bank (Zug would be an offshore tax haven if Switzerland had any shores). This gave me a little bit of worry (would people think I was some sort of delivery urchin?), but that soon evaporated when we established that it wasn't so much "bike hire" as "here, have a bike for the day, bring it back when you like". All we had to do was leave a passport to ensure we couldn't do an ET and fly off to Germany.
So off we went. There's no serious traffic in Switzerland, and soon we were at the lake edge, admiring the huge rocky island that rose out of the middle and the way the warm sun glittered off the water's calm face. The sky was as blue as in movies, and everything gleamed.
At first the path was flat, running along the edge of the lake between fields full of eager plants and pristine cottages that all seemed to be made from painted wood and cheerfulness. There were little hills too, domesticated versions of the steep ones we'd climbed a couple of days before. Switzerland certainly lives up to its reputation as a beautiful country. In fact, generally it is far more beautiful than even the guidebooks would have you believe.
We stopped in one or two small villages for a swig of water, often under the eves of archetypal Swiss rural barns. We were making good progress, until (pause for chords of horror) the route divided. One way was the road we were cycling on. It wasn't busy, but it was a road. The other was a wide unpaved path. We checked our handy free map with all the local paths on. It seemed we could stick more closely to the lakeside along the path, so we merrily cycled along the path, towards some trees. Just as we entered the trees, a woman who was supervising some children in the lake shallows turned and shouted: "Was machst du mit dem velos?" (German scholars please note that she only addressed one of us. Perhaps we were already doomed).
Cheerily waving, we cycled on. Until we encountered the tree roots. The path was crossed again and again by roots. In fact, it would be fair to say that the path was tree roots, all lumpy, two metres up and two metres down over the space of twenty steps (need I say that we were no longer riding the bikes at this stage?). "Never mind," we said. "It'll flatten out in a minute."
It didn't flatten, so much as start to resemble a miniature Hannibal-esque trek, with bikes instead of elephants. Alp after alp of tree roots stretched ahead. After a while I was carrying one bike about thirty metres, then going back for the other, and then picking up the first one and tottering on another thirty metres, while Claire lugged about the sandwiches and water. We couldn't even wheel along. I kept getting spiked by the corners of the big yellow box as well, which caused no end of ill will towards the naively optimistic bank whose name was still grinning inanely across the sides. We were immensely thankful that there weren't many other people on the path to see what was becoming obstinate lunacy ("we will get to the other end of this path. WE WILL….HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAAA!"). Those that did sort of smiled and walked more quickly as we lifted our hats in salute and steam came out of the top of our heads.
Finally, we emerged into the sunlight again, with a lovely, straight, even path stretching back up the hill towards the road we had so cavalierly abandoned about an hour ago. After some soothing lying down in the shade, off we went again, cycling gently through what, we could now appreciate, was a dense, lush forest, filled with small birds and wild flowers. It was so peaceful that even our battered spirits were restored. For a long time we saw no one else, couldn't even hear a car. It was great. We thought that our troubles were over.
But no. The gods of the big yellow box had further tribulations in store. When we eventually reached the road, we began a long freewheel down towards groups of ramblers who were clustered around their cars at the bottom of the hill. As we approached them, a car suddenly lurched out of the car park and swung towards us. We slammed on our brakes. Claire gently slowed and moved out of the way. My brakes made a peculiar "sproing-ftclipck!" noise and the back wheel was locked tight. Ker-flump-kerdunk, I went sideways across the road and onto the grass verge.
We were just under half way round, and had covered far too far to walk back easily, even if the bike wheels were going round, which they weren't. When the brake cable snapped, the brake jaws had locked around the wheel, and now had nothing to hold them apart. It was about midday. Steve wouldn't be back until the evening. As far as we knew were we miles from the nearest settlement. We could have sat and wailed for a while, but there were people watching. We were determined to get going somewhere, and going on was as good as going back at this stage. Since the front brakes still worked, all that was needed was some means of keeping the back brakes off the wheel. I tried jamming the jaws of the brake apart with the brake cable.
Our first few attempts involved Claire setting off, then me trying to follow, accidentally touching the brake lever, and then feeling a huge horrible juddering through my bike, accompanied by maniacal plastic laughter from the box on the back. We got about a kilometre in an hour. What was needed was some means of tying the brake jaws apart, and then some means of preventing me from using the brake. In desperation, I pulled the chinstrap, made of something like a shoelace, from my intrepid explorer's sun hat, and applied a nifty knot. This worked to some extent, but soon we were sitting in the square of a tiny village looking woefully up at the sun and wondering if we could persuade one of the local householders to set up their settlement's first café, where we could wait for the Steve-shaped cavalry. But by now we were more than half way round. We had to carry on. At least it wasn't raining.
Fortunately my brake crisis was slightly resolved when in a moment of nerve-shredded daftness, I pulled the brake lever at the top of a hill and the whole mechanism fell to bits. This meant that there was no danger of the wheel locking again. All I had to do was explain the slight mishap to the men running the bike bus back in Zug. We could now hope to get there, however.
We coasted down into the next town, noticing that it had got considerably cooler. Then, without warning of any kind, hundreds of clouds rushed in as though they were wildly celebrating some sporting victory, and proceeded to drench us to the skin. Since there had been no indication of any rain for the past four days, we were unprepared to say the least. All we could see now was a grey road, grey sky and grey lake, all as wet as each other.
The problem of the bike was bothering me too, and so Claire heroically stopped a passer by to ask if there was a bicycle repair shop nearby (there's never a Monty Python around when you need one). Apparently there was, so, blowing raindrops off the ends of our noses as we went, we tracked it down. IT WAS CLOSED!!!!
The rain drizzled and dripped and sloshed and slopped and splashed and slurged and soaked and squelched and damped and depressed. We continued round the lake, feeling the sort of feeling that can only otherwise be achieved by chewing on sugar paper and staring at black and white photographs of mid-1950s oil sumps. We were getting closer to Zug and my date with bicycle destiny, but for the moment it was our drearily slow progress along the final stretch that occupied our minds. The yellow box and the rain seemed to be in cahoots.
At last the rain stopped and the chilly wind began to dry us. Zug became visible, and we were soon in the outskirts. We began to feel post-rain crispiness creeping into our hair, clothes and skin, and then there we were, confronting the bicycle men.
The younger of the two, who was tall and blond, seemed to think the whole thing was quite amusing. He was quite prepared to give me my passport back, so long as I didn’t splash him with rainwater. The other, however, who was dark-haired, short and wiry, wanted to know what had happened, how, who, where, why… Claire’s German soon gave up the struggle, and neither of them spoke any English. I tried French, but my interrogator wasn’t very good at that either, and my apres-deluge frazzledness didn’t help me construct sentences. After a while, he shrugged, and I got my passport back. At the very least I’d been expecting to have to pay for the repairs, but it seems it doesn’t work that way in Switzerland: the bike was free to hire, and free to break. Perhaps the curse of the yellow box was fully insured by the sponsoring bank.
I needed some kind of recuperation after all that, so Claire guided me to a nearby café, where I was plied with coffee and cake until I recovered. Then, carefully avoiding the lines of sight from the bike bus, we wobbled up the hill to Steve’s house for hot baths and cups of tea, which we drank looking out of the window down the hill to the lake – it looked quite beautiful again from there.